Category Archives: Cars & Driving

No, I better not go. I think I’m too busy. But busy doing what? I’ve been writing about Donald Trump for several years and working to finish my second book about the blowhard from Queens. I can’t sit at my computer when Bernie Sanders is just a few miles away and soon to speak. I […]

I’m just the old night watchman, now called security guard, making sure no one steals or vandalizes the cars. I’m not against Joe. I’ve often seen him pushing his grocery cart by the lot very late, and sometimes we said hello, but he always kept going, until tonight when he stops and brings wire-cutters out […]

Food and decorations rolled into the house for my wife’s birthday party that evening, and I, a preoccupied sort, only then realized I hadn’t chipped in. “Sorry, I’ll go to the bank.” “No, tomorrow,” she said. “Right now.” “Later.” I was already opening the interior door to the garage, a little after noon, and drove […]

I’m surrounded by lots of nasty newspaper and magazine articles and insulting letters and want you to understand this deluge on my doorstep is the same or worse than cyber bullying. Not many understand. I’m nineteen and make fifty million a year and fans love me and I’m doing things most my age would do. […]

Last night as aroused husband attempted to mount I closed legs and said, “Give me the keys. I’ve places to go in the morning.” “I’ll take you.” “You’ll be at work.” “My brother’ll drive.” “He’ll be late if he comes at all. Give me the keys.” “You can’t drive. It’s contrary to Saudi law and […]

Clyde started lawn jobs several years earlier but never gave good one since car old and weak. Late on rainy Saturday night friend loaned high horsepower machine. Clyde eased onto large lawn with no trees, power braked with left foot, gunned engine with right, shifted automatic into low, and floored accelerator. Car roared and rear […]

“I can’t drive tomorrow,” said an independent taxi driver in Quito, Ecuador. “Why not?” I asked. “Pico y placa.” “What’s that?” “Traffic control.” “Traffic’s pretty bad.” “Without pico y placa, it would be much worse.” “What’s the program?” “One day a week most people can’t drive. Public taxi drivers are an exception. It’s based on […]

Pushing hand between armrest and cushion of ragged sofa, I searched for unknown artifacts and pulled out faded savings pass book revealing thirty years ago had opened account with hundred dollars, inauspicious total for man in twenties. Two weeks later I needed ninety dollars. That happens when make few hundred monthly. I still rebuilt balance […]

another gridlocked nightmare on hot 405 south in santa monica mountains needing to pee late for work ready to drive on shoulder or in emergency lane must get hell out to civilized community would’ve imploded when whitecaps whooshed me through cloudy cold canyon flowing too fast to stop

pretty colombian bride returns to adult class for quick writing tip and says in college taking fifty units a semester to become nurse two years later pretty colombian bride decade older enters and signs same last name after class i ask if they’re related she frowns saying no and marches out next day after class […]

I still wonder if my adult working career for many years progressed like a tortoise in sand because of apathy or a reflexive hatred of manual labor that began too soon, at age nine, when my mother remarried and her new husband, a drill sergeant masquerading as an electrical engineer and contractor, drafted my stepbrother […]

Last fall, just before deadline, I bought a ticket to the forty-year reunion of my high school class in Sacramento. I wanted to see about ninety percent of the people on the party list but had hesitated, fearing that a few of the rest might say something insulting and there’d be unpleasantness so a few […]

In the summer of 1978 I lived in a small old room at the rear of a dreary house in north Sacramento, one of the worst parts of the Golden State’s capital city. Fortunately, I didn’t know I’d have to stay there several more years until a modest inheritance temporarily rescued me, and was delighted […]

Oh, what a foolish risk it was. It really should be illegal. I don’t know why it isn’t. All rational people understand it’s dangerous to drive while listening to Jim Morrison sing “Light My Fire.” Actually, I had been thoroughly reasonable all day, easing out of my motel in San Francisco and carefully driving through […]

I wish I’d been more on the ball and returned to somehow punish the scoundrel who sold me my first car. The deed occurred on an ominous weeknight when my stepfather drove me east of Sacramento to a fine suburban home where a slender dorky old man at least forty-five opened the door and said, […]

For three days Robert chased fun in the Bay Area then realized he had nowhere to go but the home he’d been so anxious to leave. Driving back on blistered and dreary Interstate 5, he repeatedly inserted and ejected rock and classical CDs that no longer roused but irritated and urged him to conclude seventy […]